Advent 2 - Isaiah 40

I don’t know about you, but I have nights when I lie awake, unable to sleep for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s because of something outside myself, like the night I sat up all night with Holden because he was sick and couldn’t sleep. But usually my wakeful nights come from inside my own head. At one point, when we lived in Seattle, I realized I wasn’t sleeping because I was lying awake trying to remember everything that I had to do for the rest of the week. I solved that problem by getting myself a date-book so I could keep my calendar and make lists of things that needed my attention. For a while after that I slept really well. But more often than that, I have found myself lying awake thinking. Well, thinking isn’t really the best word for it, more like stewing, or as Nelson calls it, “perseverating.” Sometimes I’m worrying about what to say in a paper or sermon that I’m working on. But more often I’m worrying about something I said or did that I wish I hadn’t, or something I didn’t say or do that I wish I had, or how I can mess up on something that I’m going to say or do. Stewing about these things can’t actually change them, I know, but that doesn’t stop me from stewing. And it always seems like I do the worst of my fretting in the darkest hours of the night.
In the season of Advent it is easy to fall into stewing. Here in the darkest hours of the year, we are inclined to look back at the things that we have done over the past year. Though our culture likes to focus this yearly review around New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, the church year has already started, and the readings that are set for the season of Advent invite us to take some time to look back and consider where we have been. Indeed, we are invited to stew a bit in the darkest days of the year. But this is stewing with a purpose. We are stewing now in anticipation, as we prepare for the arrival of our God, whose incarnation we will celebrate in just two weeks. In the meantime, we are invited, especially in this week’s readings, to think about how to prepare ourselves for that arrival.
Today’s Isaiah reading reminds us of John the Baptist’s call to repentance and our preparation for Christ’s arrival. The problem is, in our culture, and sometimes even in the church, we tend to confuse stewing with repentance. We shy away from the word “repent” because we think it means that we should sit and think about all of the things we messed up, and focus our energy on how we’ve gone wrong. And frankly, that’s a real downer, so why would we want to do it? Why would we want to repent, if it means we are going to spend our time focusing on everything that’s wrong, rather than those few things that we get right?
But that is not the kind of call that we hear from our God through Isaiah. Instead of harsh condemnation or a focus on our sins, the first words from God’s mouth are “Comfort, O comfort my people…speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” Yes, Isaiah acknowledges the sins of Israel, and indeed that Israel has paid for those sins. And Isaiah stews a bit on these sins. When God calls on him to preach to the people, to cry out, Isaiah responds, “What shall I cry? All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades…surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades.” That sounds a lot like what is going through my mind when I lie awake at 3am, going over and over my failings. Isaiah is perseverating as surely as ever I do.
Yet in contrast to condemnation, to wallowing in our wrongs, what we hear next is God’s promise: “the word of our God will stand forever.” Here in the darkest night of the year, as we stew over all that we might have done differently, all that we didn’t do that we wish we had, all that we imagine we will do wrong in the coming year, Isaiah reminds us that even here God’s word stands. And knowing that, we might actually be able to rest. We might actually find our rest and dream about God’s promises through the night.
Because there is where repentance really happens. Not in the hours that we lie awake and play over and over our worst moments. But later , after the hours of rest, when we finally allow ourselves to fall asleep and rest in the dreams of God’s promises. We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. Why then, would God want us to lie awake beating ourselves up for something that we can’t fix? Instead, God invites us to rest, to turn ourselves over to the dream, the vision that God has for our lives, the promises that God has set before us. The stewing has its place, but that is not the work that God has set for us.
Having planted the dreams of God’s promises here in our rest, God now nudges us awake. In the light of the new day, those worries of the wee hours always seem strange, overblown, out-of-place. In the light of the new day, we can compare our stewing to God’s promises, and we can see that God’s promises win. And then we are able to repent. In Hebrew, the word that we translate as repent means to turn back, to return. It is a word that is about remembering what God sees in us, what God has promised us, and then trying to align our lives with that vision. It is the moment when we awake and make our plans for a new day, a day that will be different from the ones that left us stewing. Of course we’ll still get it wrong, but in those moments we can remember what God has promised: Comfort and constancy.
This week we are stewing, lying awake, waiting for the rest that is to come. But we can see it, not far off. Soon we will meet God’s promises face to face, in the form of a newborn baby, God born into the world for our sake. It is the promise of Jesus Christ that we can rest in. It is the promise of Christ that gives us the strength to face the new day, the new year, and to repent, to return to what God has promised. God invites us now to rest, to dream, so that we can awaken to the reality of God’s promises in the light of Jesus Christ, and arise to meet God in the light.